UChicago 2018.

I move. I move even on the days when I don’t leave my desk, when my gaze is never averted from my computer’s monitor. I move because I do stuff. Being a mover is about not waiting for opportunities to present themselves plain as day, but seeking them out, creating my own luck. When I’m bored, I don’t sit back and pop on a movie. I say, today I’ll build myself a new blogging system on my personal website! Today, I’ll implement a new drawing feature in my iPhone app. Today, I’ll learn about integral calculus a year before the first test! Starting to see a pattern? A mover, as defined by the OED is “a person or thing in motion”. In this context, however, the motion need not be literal kinematic motion, but rather some sense of progress. I am proud to say that I always strive to move in the direction of progress, forward towards some goal. I try not to wait for people to catch up, or let myself wait until they start moving. If I were a sprinter, I’d like to be Usain Bolt, just running as fast as I could, not looking back over my shoulder, confident that my trajectory is right. Some nights, when my homework isn’t very scintillating, when I feel that my life is on the precipice of fading into stodginess, I get on a path and just go. Last week, going meant exploring an algorithm to pull out the most dominant colors in an image. Why did I do it? For extra credit in my Computer Science class? Sure, extra credit would have been nice, but my object was simply piquing my intellectual curiosity. I don’t like standing still, in the metaphorical sense. I pace when on phone calls because I like to keep things moving, and the forward progress is somehow soothing. I don’t like standing still-it’s boring. I know there are always new things for me to explore in the world, and once I’ve drunk in one locale, I yearn to find another to so absorb. I sometimes ramble a bit, in case you haven’t noticed, but that’s because I like to keep going, and sometimes the only way to do so successfully is just to let words out. I like to move, and I plan on staying in motion.